by Anna Leonard
This time she took him to Toro Rojo. It was cheap, cheesy and in no way could ever be considered a romantic place to dine. He took her arm as they walked from her car to the front door, and warmth spread from the point of contact, all the way to and down her spine. She would not shiver. She would not. She would—
“Are you cold?”
“No.” She pulled open the door with a little more force than was needed, and stepped ahead of him to give her name to the waitstaff.
Behind her, she could hear him laugh.
“I don’t suppose the police have made any breakthrough discoveries about the identity of the—” She stopped, not sure how you referred to the person they were hunting. “Killer” seemed overblown; as much as she valued feline life, it didn’t seem right to put this person on the same level as a murderer of humans. And yet, anything else was too…soft.
“The unsub,” he finished for her. “Which is profiler-speak for nothing fancier than unknown subject of an investigation, in case you were wondering. And no, they have nothing. And I don’t expect them to; Detective Petrosian was quite clear about the fact that they don’t have the manpower to follow up on a cruelty-to-animals case when there’s no owner in the picture to make a fuss.”
He obviously expected her to protest that sort of dismissal, but she had been doing this long enough to understand the way things worked. Limited time. Limited manpower. You had to make choices in the world.
“So it’s just us, then.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
They were shown to their table and handed menus. Lily already knew what she wanted, so waited until Patrick had scanned the listings and made his decision before she continued.
“So are you going to be able to get any tax-paid support from the subpar and slow-moving resources of the federal government?”
He mimed a blow to the heart, the look in his dark eyes amused. “Why do I need them when I have you, oh most wondrous of cat talkers?”
“Keep that up and you’ll be eating dinner in your hotel room. Alone.”
That seemed to quiet him, at least for the moment, and she wondered at the kind of man who could find humor even in this discussion. Her own disorientation this evening was a clear sign that she, at least, couldn’t be that glib. Then again, she had never been glib, not in her entire life.
“Seriously, I don’t know what you hoped I might find. I’m not a researcher, I’m a bank teller. I deal with figures in, figures out, and everything balances up neat and tidy on a good day.”
“And on a bad day?”
“It balances up neat and tidy, only it takes longer.”
“Sounds like my job, actually,” he parried, and she shook her head. Maybe it was the seriousness of his job, the seriousness of him, that needed that release in frivolity?
“Less bloodshed in my job.”
He acknowledged the hit. “Good point.”
Lily could feel herself starting to relax. This had been a good choice; never mind that she had groceries back home that were going to waste while she ate out. This was…different. She was helping with something important.
Yeah, sure, she told herself. And he’s a lot easier to look at than television. Unless George Clooney’s on, anyway.
“But I’m betting,” he said, “that those vaunted tallying-up skills served you pretty well this afternoon. Am I right? Despite your horrible skills with research, were you able to find anything of note, as you slaved over the files all afternoon?”
He was mocking her, she was pretty sure, and she would have bristled except for the fact that—to be fair—she had set herself up to be mocked.
“On our records? Not a lot. We’ve only computerized in the past couple of years. The rest was paper files, and I have the cuts to prove it.
“Seven of the cats adopted out in the past year specified a spotted pattern, and another eleven were tabbies who might have been spotted or striped, I don’t know. I went back five years, and found another couple of hundred cats who might have matched. Not one hundred. Not three. Five hundred cats.”
“I get the message. I’m buying. Any pattern?”
“Nothing. No particular time of year, no particular type of adopter—not even a gender pattern, which is weird, because usually women and men have different preferences.”
“Really?” He considered that for a moment, and then waved the thought away. “Path for another hike. So that’s a dead end. Sorry I made you go through all that.”
He won points for the apology. “Don’t know until you try, right? I did a little online research, though, too. I don’t have—what does Nancy call it?—good Googlefu, yeah. But I found some interesting details about cat sacrifices. Did you know that very few magic rituals use animal sacrifice, traditionally?”
Patrick nodded. “Yeah. Animals were too valuable to sacrifice, especially in agrarian cultures. Which also increased the value of one that was sacrificed, because it would be without blemish, et cetera, et cetera.” He rattled the facts off with ease. “Same with the calves sacrificed in the old Temple in Jerusalem.”
She stared at him until he shifted in his seat. ‘I know, it’s weird stuff to know. My job, it pays to pick up whatever information you can. You never know when it might connect with something else, make random facts into a working hypothesis. I know how to put together a hot tub, sharpen an ax, tat lace—yes, really, and no it doesn’t disturb my masculinity at all, thank you very much—and make paper in theory, anyway.”
“Right.” She was not going to laugh, even though his expression invited her to mock him. She was too aggravated to be amused. “Why did I even bother again?”
“Because you had a thought.” He got serious once more. “An idea, a suspicion. That’s good, run with it. I trust your brain. What I know and what there is to know are a portion and a whole, and the whole is far greater than the portion could ever aspire to.”
She felt her lips finally twitch into a smile despite her annoyance. “What fortune cookie did you get that from?”
“After-dinner mints at Master Li’s House of Chili in D.C.. Don’t laugh, he makes a mean five-alarm vegetarian chili.”
The trouble was, Lily was mostly sure that he was joking, but not entirely sure.
He let out a sigh and placed his hands flat down on the table, a gesture of surrender. “Honestly? Anything you think of, anything you see or wonder about…I needed your take on all this. Yeah, I’m the pro. But I never discount a talented amateur’s abilities, especially if I can make use of them. You downplay your connection to the cats—fine. Whatever keeps you sleeping at night. But it exists, which means that there might also be a connection we can exploit with our unsub, and his fascination with or need for cats.”
Lily was taken aback by his words, both the bluntness and the honesty. “I really, really don’t like that thought. At all. About the connection between me and him, I mean.”
“I didn’t…” Patrick seemed to flounder for a moment. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
Maybe not, she thought but didn’t say, maybe not. Or maybe he did, and was waiting to see what her reaction to that might be. He said himself, he’d use anything and anyone. Exactly what she had suspected about him. And yet, his saying it…somehow made it…less of a threat.
“I just meant that you have a better grasp than someone like me on what might be ticking inside a cat that he can hear. Not that—”
He stopped, looked at his hands, and she could practically see him throw that entire line of conversation out the window. “I’ve found that getting the point of view of someone outside the bureau, someone who hasn’t been subjected to all the same meetings and memos and lectures, gives me a better place to start. We don’t know everything—we just want to think that we do. The monsters are less scary if you can deconstruct them.”
“Are they?” Lily wondered. She didn’t think so. A monster you could understand was still a monster.
“Sometimes. For example, your basic Satanist isn’t
some kind of off-the-wall loon, but a magical theorist. He—or she—believes that there are certain actions and reactions in magic that can be manipulated. That magic is closer to science than religion. It’s results-based, not faith oriented. It’s all about sympathy…an object acting upon another, through some law of similarity or contagion. Like voudon, with their gris-gris bags and hex dolls.”
Lily had no idea whatsoever what he was talking about. Her parents had been gently lapsed Protestants, which meant that her religious education hadn’t ever really happened, and she had never gone through the kind of witchcraft-is-cool phase so many teenage girls seemed to. She’d never been particularly spiritual at all; the woo-woo never wooed her. But at least they weren’t talking about her anymore.
“So why do crazies like this sort of magic theory?” she asked, honestly intrigued with the turn of the conversation.
Patrick considered her question, his gaze going sort of hazy, as though he was looking inside his brain. She watched him, fascinated, almost able to hear the gears turning.
“Order. Rationale of a sort that does not depend on the logic we consider, well, logical. If a miracle can occur because God wishes it to occur, because we implore God enough to make it so…Or, conversely and depending on the brand of crazy, if the universe may be influenced significantly by the sheer force of their will—”
“Or sacrifice,” she said, bringing the conversation back out of theory and into the reality of their case.
Their case. Lily wasn’t sure she liked the taste of that, any more than she liked being told that she was connected in any way, shape or form to the guy Petrosian was looking for. But it felt right. She was involved, from seeing the cats so tenderly, cruelly murdered, to hearing Patrick’s thoughts. It felt…personal.
“Yeah. Or sacrifice. I’ve seen so many kinds, but cats are almost always the most popular.”
Lily moved her silverware, adjusting it carefully on the napkin. Breathe, she told herself. Don’t let anything through. Don’t let the panic attack through. Because she could feel it rising up in her throat like a bad case of the giggles, only not funny at all.
Cats. Sacrifice. Personal.
The sand was soft and shifting underfoot, cool and granular. A cat’s long, soft mmrow following her as she was dragged away, her arm and shoulder making a furrow behind her.
Breathe. Breathe, and be still.
Patrick didn’t seem to notice her distress. “Cats, although traditionally it’s black cats, would imply on the surface some kind of pseudosatanic thing. It all depends on if he’s using some sort of religious-based ritual, or a purely magical one. Or one that he’s making up, based on his own internal rationale.” His gaze refocused on her. “That’s the theory, anyway.”
“Of course, there’s another possibility,” she said, finally breaking free of the too-vibrant images.
“Oh?” He looked up at her, his head cocked as though what she was about to say was the most important thing he had ever heard.
“This guy may just be crazy.”
Patrick’s entire face twitched, and before she could react, his entire body was swooping forward, his hand coming up to capture the curve of her jaw, and he had kissed her, swiftly but firmly, on the mouth.
His lips were warm, strong, and tasted ever so slightly of coffee. It wasn’t an unpleasant kiss; nor was it a particularly passionate one. It said, clearly, “You delight me and I want to touch you,” but didn’t go any further over the line than that, and then he was back in position, his body as casually at ease as before.
And they looked at each other, her eyes widened with shock, his heavy lidded, watching her reaction.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, less shocked than bemused. Her lips practically tingled.
“Because I couldn’t not.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple jolting in his throat. Like his uncharming moments, she found that disturbingly appealing.
But she was solid, steady-as-she-goes Lily. She didn’t jump into anything feet-first, not even after she’d measured the depth and tested the waters.
So she waited until he leaned forward again and touched those soft, coffee-scented lips to hers again.
Only then did she let her hands lift to touch the back of his head, stroking the surprisingly soft curls there, curving her fingers around the shape of his skull as she adjusted their angle for better contact.
He let her. She appreciated that. Agent Jon T. Patrick might be arrogant, aggressive and far too focused on the finish line, but he knew a thing or two about letting others take the lead.
Then his mouth opened, teeth capturing her bottom lip gently before his hands were around her neck, thumbs resting against her cheekbones, and Lily suddenly felt as though she were falling endlessly into a velvet-lined pit, the most fabulous room spins ever not brought on by alcohol.
They broke apart. “Oh.” It was barely a breath, falling out of Lily’s mouth as she tried to recover. She could feel a flush rising up her neck and around down to her breasts. Was that where “hot under the collar” came from?
“We got more than chemistry, Ms. Lily Malkin,” he said, shaking his head almost imperceptibly. “We got alchemy.”
Something about the words, the way he said them, or the sound of them, made Lily blink. The flush didn’t recede, exactly, but the rest of her came back to room temperature.
“You’re as dangerous as the people you chase, Agent Patrick,” she told him.
“And you’re not the kind of woman who would invite me back to her place to continue this discussion out of the range of innocent civilians, are you?”
No. As a profiler, he was right on target. She wasn’t.
She very much wished she was, though.
Chapter 7
“Oh man, oh man, oh man.” Lily replayed that kiss all the way home; as she brushed her teeth; as she slipped on her nightshirt and toed off her socks; as she crawled into bed and fluffed the pillow; as she flipped channels until, finally, still muttering under her breath, she fell asleep.
And then, she didn’t dream of that kiss at all.
“My love.” She brought the news to him as a gift, the proof of her devotion. “I have done as you asked of me.”
“Have you now?”
His voice was lazy, oiled and smooth like his skin, and she paused in the doorway, suddenly uncertain.
“My love?” Her heart thumped irregularly, as though a dove were trapped within. Something was wrong. Had she failed somehow? Had her efforts not been enough? She lived in terror of failing him, of seeing the light in his eyes fade, change from love to scorn, or worse, to indifference.
“Have you done all that I required?” he asked her.
“I have.” And at great cost to herself; cost she could not allow herself to acknowledge. Pain she would not admit, even as it cut at her heart, crippled her ka, her inner soul. She could not doubt her heart now. He was worth it, worth all she had given up. All she had done, in his name. “There are none that might stand in your way now.”
“There is still one,” he disagreed.
“My love?” Even now she could not use his name, could not risk identifying him to a jealous ear, a lingering spy. She cupped the heavy bronze medallion that hung around her neck with one shaking hand. The comfort it normally bought her was absent, and in its place, an unease.
A sleek golden cat turned the corner, turned its head and looked at her, its large luminescent eyes watching her. She reached for it, and it disappeared.
Her lover rose from his chair, bronze skin glinting in the torchlight, muscles moving smoothly. She feasted herself on him, on his beauty, his strength, and the cat was forgotten.
In her distraction a shadow came from the wall behind her where nothing should have been, movement sudden and unexpected. She turned, confused. Pain, like a cobra’s strike, bit into her side even as her lover came up to her.
She fell, still clutching the medallion, staring at his beloved face, even as blood and dust filled her mo
uth.
Why? The question filled her. Why, after all she had done?
“There is nothing more you may give me,” he said almost kindly, as the assassin took the medallion from her stiffening hands. “Nothing, save your death. The body of the betrayer will earn me much acclaim with the pharaoh.”
Love turned to realization, and then to rage, too late as he accepted the medallion from her killer’s hands. I will never forgive you, she vowed. I will never forgive myself.
Her ka shuddered, and slipped out of her body. It paused for a moment, touching her cooling skin with small white paws, then raised its head to the sky and cried for her shame.
Not forever. Only until you learn to forgive.
Lily sat upright in bed, her heart racing, her skin coated with sweat. The old T-shirt she slept in, the sleeves and collar cut away, clung to her, and she pulled it off in disgust, preferring the cool night air to having the cloth touch her skin an instant longer. She wiped at the sweat, and a shudder wracked her body. “Oh, God.”
Another nightmare. That was two in one week, which was two too many, even for her. They were getting worse, not better.
Had this one been about cats again? She didn’t think so, but she couldn’t remember. There were no details, just a sense of…anger. Betrayal. Sadness.
Lilly pulled up the blanket to cover herself. She lay on her back for a while, then rolled over, shoving a pillow away as though it were to blame for the feeling of suffocation, like something were pressing against her face. The air smelled sour, sweet and warm; too thick, too filled with odors she couldn’t quite recognize, as though she had fallen asleep in a stranger’s kitchen.
Her mouth opened slightly, her lips pulling back from her teeth as she took in short breaths, as though sipping the air. She realized suddenly that she was trying to taste the air the way cats did, and her laughter conflicted with the business of breathing, making her cough.
“Ugh.”
Her entire mouth felt weird, icky, as if she had eaten something nasty, or had had too much to drink.